Why to keep the context on the client's account is honest and profitable
When I tell my colleagues that we do not have an agent account in Yandex.Direct, they have sincere perplexity on their faces. I think that anyone who is seriously engaged in this type of advertising has already formulated at least three reasons why it is foolish and unprofitable to do this without agency status:
And in general, it is more convenient to work in one place, and everyone does it!
I am not going to argue with these arguments, they are fair. But as in any collaboration, there is a second side and its arguments. And if we want to get mutual benefits from cooperation, the arguments should at least be learned, and even better - taken into account in the work.
I propose to disassemble a few real cases from our experience.
The customer paid for the placement in Yandex and Google through the agency. He receives monthly reports with elegant charts and buzzwords. The mood of the reports is positively Napoleonic.
But the customer is dissatisfied, because traffic - traffic, and sales - sales. And with sales somehow not very. And he also began to think that something in the reports was being kept back.
And he decides to leave the warm embrace of one company and trust the other. But it was not there!
Distressed and offended partner does not give the jointly acquired ads. This is his last argument: do not want - start from scratch. Explains his behavior in the impossibility of providing expanded access to the agent's office, but we know that this is a banal harm. If you wish, you can unload campaigns in three clicks with the mouse.
The problem here is that you have no intellectual property for the campaigns you have created. It is not even partly your property.
Do you know why? Because no one will sign such a contract, which in the case of the first storm in a relationship leaves one of the parties in a zeroed state and without money. And we do not talk about it at the signing stage, because we do not want to start a relationship with fear and mistrust. But fears do not disappear anywhere.
Setting up campaigns on a client account, which few people do, guarantees him a kind of “airbag”. Do not be afraid that the customer will want to leave you or will subconsciously prepare for this: work well, show real results, and he will have no reason. Fear that he does not want to work with you, because he does not feel the necessary level of openness.
A retail company with a good advertising budget is placed through an agency. Accounting closing documents, reports, acts of reconciliation - everything comes regularly and in full. Clicks are coming, CTR is growing, there is no conversion. What could be wrong here?
Four of the five clients, having gained access to the partner office, will not begin to look and check anything themselves. So, they can send any reports, especially if the campaign is detailed and with serious coverage: a huge xls report for 10-20 thousand lines from an unprepared person causes the desire to quickly scroll to understandable human explanations and the total amount.
Those funds that are transferred to the balance of the agency can be used in different ways. For example, transfer to the accounts of other customers, temporarily closing the sudden lack of money there, so as not to stop the campaign. Thus, the agency at the expense of one of his client lends to others. Then the shortage is eliminated due to similar transfers from other clients, so the dynamics of expenses remains smooth.
But even if it was not possible to eliminate it, the numbers are adjusted manually (the same is common Excel). The client’s responsible employee receives a report file that does not understand anything in contextual advertising, checks the amount and closes the file. Full order, advertising goes, he informs the management about it.
You will say: “Well, this does not mean that everyone is doing it!” And you will be right. But there are such cases, and it is very easy to do this: it is enough that the client does not have high levels of access, and the payment goes to the balance of the agent’s office.
Online toy store is located in Yandex.Direct. Configured generation of unique ads for queries that collects the metric. The budget is huge, the context pays off. But there is one problem. A detailed analysis of campaigns among the thousands of ads are such that they have nothing to do with either the product or the store itself.
The reason is the same: the customer does not have the time and opportunity to check campaign statistics, this is too much data. As a result, at his expense, minor third-party projects are advertised.
Unscrupulous agencies even use remarketing lists collected by the client over several years to obtain leads on the sites of its competitors. Pay-per-click contextual advertising is now very popular, and remarketing with working hotlists gives excellent results.
Is it possible to cheat in a similar way on a client account? Yes you can. But it is much more difficult to hide, because data on all operations are available on demand, and (very important) first-hand.
The company organizes medical tourism: it helps people who do not have the opportunity to receive qualified medical benefits in Russia to use the services of foreign clinics. This is an expensive topic: the stakes are high, the competition is serious. If placed through an agency that works “for free”, then it looks like savings.
We have clearly demonstrated that this is not the case. And all it was necessary to clean the semantics. For the first month, the budget decreased by 2 times with the same volume of clicks. Why didn't the “free” agency do this?
Because it is not free: the agency is not profitable to reduce the budget, because it automatically reduces the size of the commission. Dear keywords and high stakes - no, not a minus, but a source of income. Provided that the client agrees to pay, of course.
Pay attention, besides the direct benefit, with this approach there is also an indirect one: the working time of the staff is saved. The one that we offer to pay our customers, and the one that ultimately reduces the advertising budget. When paying for specific jobs are not motivated to actively or passively inflate monthly payment, on the other hand, there is a motivation to reduce it: the customer with b about lshim gladly pay for work that enhances the performance of your campaign.
Well, these four cases illustrate well the risks that the customer has. But what about our side? We also need to have breakfast, but in general, it would be nice to have lunch and dinner.
In a mutually beneficial relationship, profits should be provided for both parties. What are we going to take?
First, we forget the agency commission and do not focus on it. Fearfully? Only at first glance. The dark half of our revenues has disappeared, the customer knows and trusts us about this fact. So, we honestly tell him how much our services cost. Just like that, in watches and pieces.
Secondly, we are not afraid that competitors will crush us with dumping. In reality, no one lives on one agent cashback, there is nothing to live there. So if the commission is 0%, then look for hidden payments. The last two sentences can be quoted to the customer unchanged, but with a friendly smile and a willingness to cite at least a couple of examples.
Thirdly, we are not ashamed to offer passing services, discounts on SEO, preferential drawing of banners, the creation of landing pages - in general, nobody canceled upsale. And everything is exactly the same: in clocks and pieces, as open as possible.
The main "trick" of this approach is that your arguments and suggestions are understandable and perceived in a natural way. And this creates an atmosphere of complete trust, in which it is much easier to talk about your fee.
Separately, I emphasize: it does not matter for what exactly you will take the money and how much your services cost. Although the director is leased for a year. Crucial is the transparency of the scheme and detail.
As you know, the client can never be trusted, and even better, by default, consider him as unlucky and clumsy as possible. Will he lose access to the office at the first opportunity? Of course, lose!
The main risks are connected, in fact, with two possibilities:
It is easy to notice that in both cases the main problem is the lack of proper organization of property rights within the company. If you are worried about the future of the customer, are filled with sympathy for him or just love your work and want to do it well, then it will be useful to have two good habits:
Can a client secretly give access to another agency for an audit, get a devastating report and completely abandon your services? Of course! But there is nothing bad or unfair if you are ready to be responsible for the quality of your work. It is unpleasant that you were taken by surprise? Work as if you are rated 24/7.
And in order to eliminate the situation when you terminate the contract with you, after changing the access details, carefully study the terms of the contract in that part of it, which is devoted to the resolution of disputes. Do not forget about mutual financial responsibility - it is very discipline both parties.
There is a small minus: the more the customer is engaged in studying the system, the more likely it is that he will decide to deal with the context on his own. But, firstly, if you develop yourself, he will never catch up with you in terms of level, and secondly, if you are not greedy, your services will still be cheaper than his own time.
I understand perfectly well that not everyone agrees with the above arguments. And in no case do I urge everyone to switch to this scheme of work. In the end, while there are so few of us, we have reason to call this a competitive advantage. But to think about how our attitudes are perceived from the opposite side of the contract is always useful.
- Content systems pay agencies a reverse commission. Its size is calculated as a percentage of the advertising budget. The more a client spends money through an agency, the greater the profit.
- Delegating the supreme authority over the account to the customer is dangerous: it will either break everything or lose everything.
- A client with his own account at any time can disable our wonderful agency and connect bad and dishonest competitors.
And in general, it is more convenient to work in one place, and everyone does it!
I am not going to argue with these arguments, they are fair. But as in any collaboration, there is a second side and its arguments. And if we want to get mutual benefits from cooperation, the arguments should at least be learned, and even better - taken into account in the work.
I propose to disassemble a few real cases from our experience.
Case 1. I will not give you anyone!
The customer paid for the placement in Yandex and Google through the agency. He receives monthly reports with elegant charts and buzzwords. The mood of the reports is positively Napoleonic.
But the customer is dissatisfied, because traffic - traffic, and sales - sales. And with sales somehow not very. And he also began to think that something in the reports was being kept back.
And he decides to leave the warm embrace of one company and trust the other. But it was not there!
Distressed and offended partner does not give the jointly acquired ads. This is his last argument: do not want - start from scratch. Explains his behavior in the impossibility of providing expanded access to the agent's office, but we know that this is a banal harm. If you wish, you can unload campaigns in three clicks with the mouse.
The problem here is that you have no intellectual property for the campaigns you have created. It is not even partly your property.
Do you know why? Because no one will sign such a contract, which in the case of the first storm in a relationship leaves one of the parties in a zeroed state and without money. And we do not talk about it at the signing stage, because we do not want to start a relationship with fear and mistrust. But fears do not disappear anywhere.
Setting up campaigns on a client account, which few people do, guarantees him a kind of “airbag”. Do not be afraid that the customer will want to leave you or will subconsciously prepare for this: work well, show real results, and he will have no reason. Fear that he does not want to work with you, because he does not feel the necessary level of openness.
Case 2. The main thing - reporting
A retail company with a good advertising budget is placed through an agency. Accounting closing documents, reports, acts of reconciliation - everything comes regularly and in full. Clicks are coming, CTR is growing, there is no conversion. What could be wrong here?
Four of the five clients, having gained access to the partner office, will not begin to look and check anything themselves. So, they can send any reports, especially if the campaign is detailed and with serious coverage: a huge xls report for 10-20 thousand lines from an unprepared person causes the desire to quickly scroll to understandable human explanations and the total amount.
Those funds that are transferred to the balance of the agency can be used in different ways. For example, transfer to the accounts of other customers, temporarily closing the sudden lack of money there, so as not to stop the campaign. Thus, the agency at the expense of one of his client lends to others. Then the shortage is eliminated due to similar transfers from other clients, so the dynamics of expenses remains smooth.
But even if it was not possible to eliminate it, the numbers are adjusted manually (the same is common Excel). The client’s responsible employee receives a report file that does not understand anything in contextual advertising, checks the amount and closes the file. Full order, advertising goes, he informs the management about it.
You will say: “Well, this does not mean that everyone is doing it!” And you will be right. But there are such cases, and it is very easy to do this: it is enough that the client does not have high levels of access, and the payment goes to the balance of the agent’s office.
Case 3. At whose expense is the banquet?
Online toy store is located in Yandex.Direct. Configured generation of unique ads for queries that collects the metric. The budget is huge, the context pays off. But there is one problem. A detailed analysis of campaigns among the thousands of ads are such that they have nothing to do with either the product or the store itself.
The reason is the same: the customer does not have the time and opportunity to check campaign statistics, this is too much data. As a result, at his expense, minor third-party projects are advertised.
Unscrupulous agencies even use remarketing lists collected by the client over several years to obtain leads on the sites of its competitors. Pay-per-click contextual advertising is now very popular, and remarketing with working hotlists gives excellent results.
Is it possible to cheat in a similar way on a client account? Yes you can. But it is much more difficult to hide, because data on all operations are available on demand, and (very important) first-hand.
Case 4. The more - the better!
The company organizes medical tourism: it helps people who do not have the opportunity to receive qualified medical benefits in Russia to use the services of foreign clinics. This is an expensive topic: the stakes are high, the competition is serious. If placed through an agency that works “for free”, then it looks like savings.
We have clearly demonstrated that this is not the case. And all it was necessary to clean the semantics. For the first month, the budget decreased by 2 times with the same volume of clicks. Why didn't the “free” agency do this?
Because it is not free: the agency is not profitable to reduce the budget, because it automatically reduces the size of the commission. Dear keywords and high stakes - no, not a minus, but a source of income. Provided that the client agrees to pay, of course.
Pay attention, besides the direct benefit, with this approach there is also an indirect one: the working time of the staff is saved. The one that we offer to pay our customers, and the one that ultimately reduces the advertising budget. When paying for specific jobs are not motivated to actively or passively inflate monthly payment, on the other hand, there is a motivation to reduce it: the customer with b about lshim gladly pay for work that enhances the performance of your campaign.
And what about the other side?
Well, these four cases illustrate well the risks that the customer has. But what about our side? We also need to have breakfast, but in general, it would be nice to have lunch and dinner.
In a mutually beneficial relationship, profits should be provided for both parties. What are we going to take?
First, we forget the agency commission and do not focus on it. Fearfully? Only at first glance. The dark half of our revenues has disappeared, the customer knows and trusts us about this fact. So, we honestly tell him how much our services cost. Just like that, in watches and pieces.
Secondly, we are not afraid that competitors will crush us with dumping. In reality, no one lives on one agent cashback, there is nothing to live there. So if the commission is 0%, then look for hidden payments. The last two sentences can be quoted to the customer unchanged, but with a friendly smile and a willingness to cite at least a couple of examples.
Thirdly, we are not ashamed to offer passing services, discounts on SEO, preferential drawing of banners, the creation of landing pages - in general, nobody canceled upsale. And everything is exactly the same: in clocks and pieces, as open as possible.
The main "trick" of this approach is that your arguments and suggestions are understandable and perceived in a natural way. And this creates an atmosphere of complete trust, in which it is much easier to talk about your fee.
Separately, I emphasize: it does not matter for what exactly you will take the money and how much your services cost. Although the director is leased for a year. Crucial is the transparency of the scheme and detail.
But what about security?
As you know, the client can never be trusted, and even better, by default, consider him as unlucky and clumsy as possible. Will he lose access to the office at the first opportunity? Of course, lose!
The main risks are connected, in fact, with two possibilities:
- The client account is registered by a specific employee who has unique access rights. The employee leaves - access is lost. And if he quit through conflict, he also blackmails with these accesses.
- The client account is registered to one of the partners. As a rule, this partner is at the same time the owner of the site, domain, hosting, and generally the entire online business component. Partner leaves the business - access is lost.
It is easy to notice that in both cases the main problem is the lack of proper organization of property rights within the company. If you are worried about the future of the customer, are filled with sympathy for him or just love your work and want to do it well, then it will be useful to have two good habits:
- Backup and duplication of systems
- Instructing
Can a client secretly give access to another agency for an audit, get a devastating report and completely abandon your services? Of course! But there is nothing bad or unfair if you are ready to be responsible for the quality of your work. It is unpleasant that you were taken by surprise? Work as if you are rated 24/7.
And in order to eliminate the situation when you terminate the contract with you, after changing the access details, carefully study the terms of the contract in that part of it, which is devoted to the resolution of disputes. Do not forget about mutual financial responsibility - it is very discipline both parties.
There is a small minus: the more the customer is engaged in studying the system, the more likely it is that he will decide to deal with the context on his own. But, firstly, if you develop yourself, he will never catch up with you in terms of level, and secondly, if you are not greedy, your services will still be cheaper than his own time.
Summing up
I understand perfectly well that not everyone agrees with the above arguments. And in no case do I urge everyone to switch to this scheme of work. In the end, while there are so few of us, we have reason to call this a competitive advantage. But to think about how our attitudes are perceived from the opposite side of the contract is always useful.